Most accounts of musical nationalism in turn-of-the-century Spain tend to give a prominent place to the names of Manuel de Falla, Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados – all of them especially noted for their instrumental music and, in the case of Falla and Granados, for their art songs. However, as Clinton D. Young demonstrates in Music Theater and Popular Nationalism in Spain, 1880–1930, most of the Spanish population of the time across all social classes would not have had any particular interest in symphonic or piano music. Indeed, it is more likely that they would have instead rushed to the numerous performances of zarzuela, an indigenous form of musical theatre whose beginnings in its modern form are typically dated back to Francisco Asenjo Barbieri's Jugar con fuego (1851) and which over time evolved into numerous ramifications (from most to least respectable: zarzuela grande, género chico, género ínfimo, sicalipsis).

Young takes as his starting point a claim made already by Álvarez-Junco, Núñez Seixas and othes: that the political turmoil and the institutional frailty characteristic of 19th-century Spain rendered the top-down nation-building process less effective than it was in other European states. In Spain, public education and the press were perhaps not very successful at instilling a sense of national conscience among its citizens – but instead, in zarzuela Spaniards found a mirror in which they could recognise themselves and feel flattered, while at the same time echoing their aspirations of being an urban, industrial and, above all, modern country. This is the main argument Young puts forward – and he does so with skill and gusto.

In an appendix, Young provides a list of some hundred zarzuelas examined in the book's compilation. The list represents only a fraction of the tens of thousands of zarzuelas premiered during the heyday of the genre – in the 1890s, eight zarzuela theatres in Madrid would stage up to four plays each per evening, and this doesn't take the Spanish provinces into account, and, in turn, Young only discusses a handful of works in his list in any detail. It is indeed such discussions – including the music, text and stagecraft – which are the most enjoyable to read, in the manner of perfectly crafted vignettes illustrating Spain's social and political evolution from the 1880s to the 1920s: from the integration of the working classes and the rural regions in the idealised picture of the nation put forward by the género chico as it reached its golden age in the 1890s to the almost complete divorce in the 1920s between operetta-infused zarzuela and the social fabric on which it had thrived in its earlier days. Although Young stops his narrative in 1930, he provides an illustrating, albeit brief, discussion of the attempts at capturing in disc the masterpieces of zarzuela during the 1950s and 1960s; it is indeed through these recordings – often featuring excellent singers such as Montserrat Caballé, Teresa Berganza and Alfredo Kraus – that some of Young's non-Spanish readers may have first become familiar with the genre.

Young's discussions of choruses and scenes is so illuminating and often entertaining to read that when he turns to discussing critical, theoretical and aesthetic debates – for example, the eternal issue with Spanish opera, or the inexistence thereof – I found myself wishing he would go back to dissecting the words and singing lines of chulapos and viejales. I hope this is not read as a criticism, but rather as testimony of Young's ability at making sense of musical and textual artefacts originating from a very specific context. The translations of choruses and arias – which I take to be Young's own – reveal how trivial most zarzuela libretti ultimately were, but Young's discussion places them admirably within the Spanish imaginary. There is evidence throughout of an admirable command of the nuances of the Spanish language, and perhaps because of this it is a bit puzzling to see that names of individuals and places have sometimes been printed slightly carelessly: music critic Juan José Cadenas appears as Cádenas at p. 90, whereas at p. 53 Young mistakes the Plaza de la Cebada (Plaza la Cebá) in Madrid for the Plaza de Cibeles.

In the extensive bibliography, I missed two works: Enrique Encabo's Música y nacionalismos en España. El arte en la era de la ideología (Barcelona: Erasmus Ediciones, 2007) and Carmen del Moral Ruiz's El género chico (Madrid: Alianza, 2004). Curiously enough, Encabo's conclusions on Gigantes y cabezudos and Del Moral Ruiz's on La gran vía are similar to Young's; I am sure it would have been fascinating to see the author engage in dialogue with both. However, overall, this is cultural history at its best – and a highly enjoyable read to be relished alongside some of the historical zarzuela recordings by the best Spanish classical singers.